Petro-violence

1. Petro-violence Dr Supriya Akerkar

2. In this lecture • Nature of Petro-violence in Nigeria • What is Resource Curse? • Role of State, Nation and Multinationals

3. …..Nigeria and Niger delta and Discovery of oil 1956 • With oil price rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nigeria shifted emphasis in its economy from agriculture to crude oil production. • Oil currently accounts for over 90% of the country’s total revenue. • Source://www.africanews.it/english/images/stories/nigeria.jpg

4. The discovery of oil should have led to prosperity, stability and development. • Yet it did not…. • Instead it has led to Petro-violence… which continues till date....... Why?

5. What economists and political economists say… • Resource curse theory….. • Nationalism, identity and struggle over resources….

6. The Resource Curse Theory andRentier Politics …. • Several studies find a negative correlation between natural resource abundance and sustained economic growth known as the resource curse. • A political resource curse associates valuable natural resources with rent seeking, authoritarian rule and political instability.

7. Rentier states and politics of hypercentralization • Oil creates specific forms of state landed property. • Oil has a centralizing effect (petrodollars into the exchequer increases the state’s dependence on one commodity). • Rents become the basis of politics—public expenditure through oil rent displaces statecraft as a way of purchasing some form of state legitimacy. • Leads to Monoeconomania (the Dutch Disease): oil produces the “petrolization” of Society. • Mono-economy and oil rents reinforce particular patterns of class power existing in the society. • The boom produces depressive effects in other non-oil sectors - typically the collapse of agriculture and of other forms of state revenue generation, i.e. tax collection. • Source:Watts (1999)

8. Effects of Rentier Politics • Rentier politics undermines economic development, state development, and prospects for democratic governance. • Rise of identity politics • Rise of questions of state legitimacy • Rise of questions of development

9. Some argue that Nigeria has only followed the resource curse pathway…..

10. Nigeria…. • Oil boom in the 1970s — a necessity for modernity converted Nigeria into a Monoeconomy: oil accounts for 90% of export revenues and over 80% of the fiscal budget. • The petrodollars channelled into the exchequer unleashed a period of state-led development in which oil rents maintained militarized stability in a competitive and volatile multi-ethnic society and a corrupt form of capital accumulation or Nigerian state capitalism, in alliance with transnational capital (oil companies)

11. By the 1980s Nigeria was in deep debt, in economic recession, in neo-liberal reforms (structural adjustment), and surrounded by tumbling oil prices. • The massive waste and corruption, ecological devastation in oil producing communities was not matched by the rewards of petrol led development. • The oil bust produced a right and proper resentment in oil producing communities across the Delta. • Case of Ogoni struggle for ecological justice…..

12. Oil map of Niger delta • Where people’s struggle began in 1980s… The Ogoni lands

13. The Ogoni struggle was a response to…. • Environmental degradation • …. The oil spill

14. The Ogoni struggle was a response to…. • The change in temperature and environment • Oil flares

15. The Ogoni struggle was a response to…. • Poverty • Polluted water and poor sanitation • Poor infrastructure

16. The Ogoni struggle was a response to…. • Adverse effects on livelihoods: • Agriculture • Fishing • Forestry

17. Demands of Ogoni struggle • Ogoni bill of rights in1990: • Political autonomy • Right to the control of a ‘fair proportion’ of their resources for their development. • Right to protect their environment • An end to gas flaring and the payment of $10 billion in royalties from oil produced in Ogoniland since 1958 and in compensation for environmental degradation

18. Bill of rights….. • Right of communities and minorities to oil revenues • Enabled an international mobilization campaign for justice • Bill presented at the UN sub-Committee on Human Rights, at the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva in 1992 and at UNPO in the Hague in 1993 • Ogoni justice became—with the help of Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace—an international issue.

19. The Ogoni Struggle led Ken Saro Wiwa… • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2PQLmhFE7s

20. The state response…. brutal repression • The state violence has taken many forms: military occupation, extrajudicial killings, and perhaps 1000 deaths in Ogoniland. • In 1994, the military ruler, General Sanni Abacha, ordered the trial of writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. • Conflict between supporters of the regime and its opponents led by the late Saro-Wiwa. • Militarisation of the area. • In November 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by hanging.

21. Growth of conflict • Several years since the Ogoni struggle, the potential consequences of this conflict have escalated in both human and economic terms across a swathe of territory several times the size of Ogoniland. • Different ethnic groups have made demands on the revenues generated through oil in Niger delta • State response: Repression

22. Source: http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/langdoc/EGA/Proposals/Ega-proposal2/sv019026.jpg

23. …… the growth of conflict • For example, in the Kaiama Declaration, issued in 1998, the Ijaw declared to cease recognition of Nigerian state legislations such as - the Land Use Decree, 1978 and the Petroleum Decrees of 1969 and 1991, the Lands (Title Vesting, etc) - Decree No 52 of 1993 (Osborne Land Decree), the National Inland Waterways Authority Decree No 13 of 1997, etc. • In essence, the Ijaw ‘repealed’ all the legislations they deemed to facilitate the vesting of the land and natural resources, namely oil and gas, on the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

24. Who has the right to control the resources? • Under International law, obligations to sovereign states recognised. Article 21(1) of the African Charter provides as follows: • All peoples shall freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources. This right shall be exercised in the exclusive interest of the people. In no case shall a people be deprived of it. • The question therefore is: Who constitute the people in a multi-ethnic state? • Is it Ogoni or ethnic communties, or a geographical area or an agglomeration of ethnic groups in a country or federal state such as Nigeria…

25. The position of multinational corporations… • Shell maintains that the demands by communities are ‘clearly political’ as well as ‘constitutional’ and thus ‘outside the influence’ and ‘jurisdiction’ of a private oil company. • Rejects all accusations of the abuse of human rights • Facts about Shell: sales in excess of the GNP of at least 127 poor countries. • In Nigeria has substantial autonomy and license to do what they wanted with military backing and indeed had their own security forces. • (Source: Watts, 1999)

26. What does petroviolence signify? • Claims over nation and citizenship • Claims over sovereignty and accountability • Claims over control of natural resources • Right to just and sustainable development?

27. What do other oil/valuable resource contexts tell us? • Equador • Venezuala • Botswana • And many other countries…. • Note: For an interesting and an alternative analysis to resource curse theory, read Poteeta A (2009): Is development path dependent or political? A reinterpretation of mineral-dependent development in Botswana, Journal of Development Studies, vol 45, no 4

28. Thank you